


Of Ghosts and Gifts

by mister_otter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas Presents, Dark Magic, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Ghosts, Happy Ending, Loneliness, Ministry of Magic Employee Draco Malfoy, Ministry of Magic Employee Hermione Granger, References to A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens, Spells & Enchantments, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27564457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mister_otter/pseuds/mister_otter
Summary: Draco Malfoy's solitary Christmas Eve turns into more of an adventure than he could ever have imagined, thanks to a pretty witch and a small, helpful (??) ghost.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 28
Kudos: 60
Collections: round 12 2020





	Of Ghosts and Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the following prompt: "One year, at Christmas, the ghost of Dobby comes back to haunt Draco (or  
> Hermione). Think Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol'." Thanks to tygermine for the fun prompt and to ningloreth for a lovely writing fest!
> 
> And a world of thanks to my lovely beta, eilonwy, for her unfailing help, support, and input!! What fun to have a beta who is also a wonderful friend!!

It began, as magical stories sometimes do, with an owl. 

A snowy owl on a snowy night, following Draco Malfoy as he made his way wearily to his flat on a quiet, Muggle street in London. 

Draco knew the owl was there, ghosting along behind him with its wide, white wings and huge, golden eyes. Almost as though the season were Halloween rather than the more festive and determinedly jolly one of Christmas.

Draco knew, too, that the owl was not there to deliver a message. At least, not one that could be fumbled open, read, and then saved or tossed into the fire as the situation dictated. This owl was likely a harbinger of some sort. More gloom, more doom, perhaps. After all, that’s why harbingers existed. 

The back gate creaked as Draco opened it, kicking at the snow that had accumulated on the path to his door. 

He ignored the owl, which settled onto a branch of the lone tree in his tiny back garden. It called just once, eerie and clear, as Draco shut the door to his small home.

Blocking out the owl and the night, he lit lamps, shed his coat and scarf, and began to prepare a simple meal. He blocked out as well the fact that it was Christmas Eve and he was all alone. 

In another part of the vast city, a pretty witch rose from her knees, her gaze on the low fire burning in her hearth and the circle of oddly colored, oddly scented candles arranged before it. 

Not cheery, holiday candles, but darkly magical ones, more suited for clandestine activities— like séances. Hermione Granger was not a witch prone to fanciful undertakings, but on rare occasions she’d found such things useful. Why be magical if one didn’t sometimes step to the edge and take advantage of the tools available?

Her favorite holiday story, Charles Dickens’ _A Christmas Carol,_ lay open on her favorite chair. Scooping it up, she sat down and gazed out at the night as snowflakes began to fall once again. She was twenty-four years old, happily employed as an archivist at the Ministry of Magic, but with a distinct lack of joy in her private life.

Things with Ron were long over. So over, in fact, that Hermione knew she would not be welcome at the Burrow this holiday season. She’d restored her parents’ memories, but at what cost? The family dynamics had changed. Mum and Dad were now distant, formal, wary. As if, after the memory wipe and relocation spells she’d done for their own protection, they couldn’t quite trust her anymore. 

Tomorrow, there’d be time for dealing with her recalcitrant parents.

Tonight, Hermione had a plan for something new. 

A useful, good plan, or so she hoped. One that she’d just put into motion. It hadn’t gone _quite_ as she’d expected, but surprise was not an altogether bad thing, was it? Especially on Christmas Eve— a time of year for happy surprises. 

If all went well, what came next would be Hermione’s gift to herself.

*

At midnight, the owl in Draco’s tree began to hoot.

The sound startled Draco, who’d been dozing in his living room chair after a liberal amount of fire whiskey, as though he were sixty rather than twenty-three. 

He’d assumed the owl was long gone. Getting up to look out the window, he watched it spread its magnificent wings and lift into the night sky. It disappeared with the whirl of falling snow. Maybe, after all, it was only an owl and not an omen.

“It’s an owl. Not an omen,” Draco repeated to himself as something thumped weirdly behind him. 

Once. Twice. Three times. Slowly, like an ominous knock on the door. 

But this knock came from the center of his sitting room. Soft, yet real enough to grab his attention. 

He didn’t want to look. He really didn’t.

But Draco turned. And saw, in the dim light of his fireplace, a small figure. It wavered, but not because of blurred vision from the whiskey he’d drunk. The figure looked… transparent. As though it were both _here_ and _not quite here._

In fact, it looked spectral.

He blinked twice. “Who are you?” he whispered.

The thing raised its arms and drew itself up until it hovered just above the floor. 

“Does Master Draco not recognize Dobby?”

“Fuck all. I must have drunk more whiskey than I’d thought.” Draco rubbed at his eyes in dismay. “You _can’t_ be Dobby. Dobby is… dead.”

“Master Draco is right. Dobby _is_ dead. Yet Dobby has come. Therefore, Dobby is scary. Master Draco should tremble. Preferably with dread.”

Draco stood, looking down at what he could only assume was the ghost of the house elf, hovering in his sitting room. “I’m sorry, but you aren’t that scary. I don’t feel any dread.”

The small ghost looked crestfallen. “Then Dobby has failed. Dobby would iron his hands, but there are no irons on this side of things.”

“Then maybe you could just stick them in the hellfire?”  


“Hell is not where Dobby is,” the elf said matter-of-factly. “Hell is where _you_ are, Master Draco.”

“I’m not…”

“Dobby is in a happy place. Master Draco is not in a happy place. He is alone, sad, and very drunk on Christmas Eve.”

Draco knew he couldn’t argue with that. 

Malfoy Manor and the vast Malfoy fortune had been confiscated after the war. Draco was now employed as a lowly Ministry functionary, living in Muggle housing as part of his restitution process. No one _he_ wanted to date wanted to date _him._ And before all of the current misery, there’d been Voldemort. ‘Hell’ was an accurate way to describe the past seven years of his life.

“Dobby, why are you here?” he asked wearily.

“To show Master Draco some things.”

“What sorts of things?” Draco sank into his chair and stared at the elf, who floated closer.

“Important things. Things from the past, things that need to be shown.”

“Could you please be less cryptic?”

“Dobby does not know about cryptic. He is here to do a job.” Dobby reached out and snapped his fingers in front of Draco’s face.

A magical force threw Draco backwards in his chair, holding him in place when he tried to rise.

“The time with Dobby will go more smoothly if Master Draco relaxes,” the house elf announced. “Dobby is about to present Master Draco with a vision.”

Draco groaned as his sight began to blur. No doubt this would be a recounting of the horrors of the war, another litany of the mistakes he’d made, his inexcusable decisions.

A cloud of smoke billowed across his sitting room ceiling. Inside, like a snow globe, he could see a small, faraway scene. It descended toward him, expanding as it came to life. 

A sudden, dazzling replay of the Yule Ball during Fourth Year engulfed him, filling his senses. Whatever Draco had been expecting, it wasn’t _that._

What he saw now was Hermione Granger— his sworn enemy, a witch of lesser blood— coming down the grand staircase like an enchanted princess.

Granger in sapphire blue, tendrils from her upswept curls escaping to frame her pretty face. Just how pretty, Draco had never noticed until now. 

He was captivated. And curious. And… enchanted himself. 

Granger swept past him, linking arms with Victor Krum and setting off to join the Parade of Tri-Wizard Champions. But not before she’d noticed him noticing _her,_ her lips quirking upward in the tiniest of smirks.

The vision whirled Draco through the night, through the kaleidoscopic dazzle of light and color, to the moment when the Wyrd Sisters took the stage.

He watched his younger self fight his way through the crowd to reach Granger’s side. Bowing gallantly, he began to dance just a little, gesturing for her to join him. She looked startled, as if half expecting him to knock her over. But then she smiled and quickly joined in. 

It was, after all, a magical night.

They danced for only moments, wild and free and laughing with all the rest, until Victor grabbed her hand, pulling her away. Hermione smiled at Draco again. He touched her arm. Felt, for just a second, her warm, smooth skin beneath his fingers… 

Except that he absolutely _hadn't_ done any of those things. 

He'd never touched her skin. Never asked her to dance. Never laughed with her beneath the flashing strobes.

Instead, these were the things Draco Malfoy fantasized about in the weeks following the ball. Things that crept into his fevered dreams at night. Things he wished he’d dared to do, after seeing how captivating Hermione Granger could be.

*

The vision slowly faded, leaving Draco with only the ghost of Dobby in his lonely flat.

“Is this supposed to bring me holiday joy?” he growled. “Reminders of times when I _almost_ wasn’t an arsehole?”

“Arsehole shoes fit Master Draco very well. But Dobby is not here to judge. He is here to show Master Draco some missed opportunities.” 

The elf snapped his fingers again and Draco was once again thrown back in his chair as a second vision took hold.

Pale streamers of blue-grey mist drifted over this vision, making it less vibrant than the Yule Ball memory.

But he recognized the scene immediately, because of the secret impact it had had.

Third Year Hermione Granger, in Professor Trelawney’s classroom. Trelawney had just insulted Granger in a serious way, telling her bluntly that she lacked the talent for succeeding at divination.  


She had also called her an old maid with a shriveled soul. 

Draco and his cronies were snickering, elbowing one another. But not for long.

Granger’s reaction had startled everyone, including Trelawney herself. 

Hermione had violently shoved the gazing ball that sat on her table, sending it crashing to the floor. 

Grabbing her books, she’d stormed toward the door.

As she’d neared Draco’s table, he could hear her muttering. “Tea is for drinking. The leaves are for tossing. _Stars_ are _balls_ of _gas_.” 

It sounded like a mantra. One with which he could totally agree. 

Portents and prophecies were one thing; those came without being called. All wizards and witches recognized that. But divination, not so much. Especially for him.

Draco hated divination class. He’d grown up with too much of the nebulous shite. Creepy seers wandering through his home in trailing robes, smelling of odd, pungent herbs. Even creepier séances that he’d been forced to attend. His family consulting the stars, or even worse, reading entrails, before every damned move they’d made. 

It was why, though he kept it to himself, astronomy was his favorite subject. The stars were just what Granger had said they were— great balls of gas. 

Draco caught Hermione’s eye as she passed and gave a short nod of approval. Understanding flashed between them, brief but very real. Granger lifted her chin, a small victory smile on her face, and swept from the classroom. 

Draco sat stunned. What had he been thinking? He immediately regretted feeling any sort of solidarity with a Mudblood, regretted acknowledging even briefly that she had a good point.

For the rest of the class, he squirmed in his seat with misery and confusion, hating Granger even more for causing him to see her, for one shining moment, as someone like _him._

But underneath all of that, unexpected admiration came creeping. Admiration for a witch with the stones to stand up and walk away from something she knew wasn’t good for her.

*,

The vision suddenly faded. Draco was left with the memory of yet another moment when he’d _almost_ not been a total prick.

But something about this night, he realized, seemed awfully familiar…

“Wait, Dobby. Wait just a fucking minute! Ghosts. Visions. This— what you’re doing— seems suspiciously like what happens in _A Christmas Carol._ ” 

“Master Draco knows about Charles Dickens?” asked Dobby with a sly smile. His large ears made him look like a wizarding version of Yoda, who Draco also knew about.

“Minister Shacklebolt required me to attend Muggle university after the war,” Draco snapped. “I read Dickens. I read _A Christmas Carol._ Are you about to show me a third vision? One that involves my future death?”

“Dobby cannot show the future. He is not that kind of ghost,” the house-elf replied. “He can only show Master Draco the past.” He snapped his fingers again.

Draco groaned a third time as he felt the magic grip him. Even if his own death weren’t involved, would he see something dreadful this time, as in the Dickens’ tale? Crabbe’s death? Dumbledore’s? Snape’s?

The vision that came was clearer than the other two. Maybe because it had happened just this week.

Draco saw his two-days-ago self on his way down to the Department of Magical Archives.

Dangerous secrets were hidden in the Archives, some half forgotten, some long buried in the mists of time. Mystery seemed to permeate the very air, rising to greet any visitor descending the long flights of torch-lined stairs, deeper into the already deep bowels of the Ministry.

Working in the Archive sometimes involved more than research. It involved spells and incantations. 

Draco liked it. Liked even more the fact that Granger worked there, quiet and intriguing among the shelves and tomes and miles upon miles of parchment. 

On occasion, his duties required him to seek her out for one thing or another. In the two years since research became part of his job description, they’d developed a rapport of sorts. The tiniest bit of joking, the tiniest bit of camaraderie. 

He’d ask her if the Archives were haunted, and she’d say Oh, yes, and make up stories about eerie beings that wandered the aisles late at night, guarding its secrets. Beings with silly names. A Grundyloot. A Caterwauling Cattywampus. The ghost of Sigmundia Plottendottir.

“Hullo, Granger.”

“Hullo, Malfoy. I might have known it was you, since it’s almost time to lock up for the night and we’re two days out from Christmas.” She smiled and perched on the edge of a reading desk, her feet crossed at the ankles. “What do you need this time?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, “Coffee in Diagon Alley. With you.” But he let the moment pass. Instead, he handed her the research request slip his boss had filled out. 

“Hmm. This one might take a little time. It looks mysterious.” Her eyes sparkled. “I can’t say that the files we need _aren’t_ in the most haunted section of the Archive.”

“Near the Grundyloot’s lair?”

“Worse.” She lowered her voice and her eyes danced. “There’s something I haven’t told you about yet. It’s called the Keening Shincrawler. Very dangerous to be around. I might not be able to get to the files at all.”

“Maybe… just a suggestion. But maybe you could trick the Shincrawler. Hold a séance and ask for its help. It wouldn’t be expecting that.”

A strangely thoughtful look came over Hermione’s face. “A _séance_ ,” she said softly. “Now, why didn’t I think of that before? That’s a brilliant idea.” Laughing, she pushed away from the reading table. “Come on, Malfoy, let’s get you sorted before I close for the holidays.”

“Big plans?” he asked as he followed her up and down the aisles.

“Not really.” She stopped, running her finger along the edge of a shelf, searching for the document he’d requested. “You?”

“None, I’m afraid.”

“Your parents are still living in France?”

“Yes, with a distant relative of my father. Beautiful old house, but my mother calls it _Chateau Difficile._ ” Difficult Castle. “I’ll wait to visit my parents for New Year’s.” 

He didn’t tell Granger that he _might_ have let his mother think he was seeing someone special, someone with whom he _might_ have made Christmas plans.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Spending the day with Mum and Dad. But things… well, it’s so different now, as I’ve told you.” Her voice was soft. “Almost as if they’d rather I didn’t come round.” 

Draco remembered thinking that maybe, just maybe, he and Granger had developed more than a bit of co-worker camaraderie through the months. He’d told her how his parents lived now. And he knew what she’d done to hers. Over time, they’d discussed breakups, dating mishaps, and heavy shite from the war. 

He remembered the Yule ball long ago, when he’d noticed she was pretty. He remembered divination class, when he’d noticed she had stones. Remembered, too, being a young arsehole with a seemingly unlimited future.

Now, he was less of an arsehole. One with less of a future than he’d thought. 

Granger was still pretty, but there was a carefully concealed sadness about her. A loneliness. Draco recognized it, because he mirrored it. 

They were, apparently, two people with no one to share their Christmas. He should ask her if she’d like to…. 

But he didn’t ask her. He didn’t say a single word. He let the moment pass.

Hermione handed him the scroll of parchment he needed and he thanked her politely. They wished each other holiday joy, made one last joke about the haunted archive and the need for a good séance.

Draco watched himself climb the endless stairs, mentally kicking his own arse with every step.

Then, from the edges of the vision, he saw something he hadn’t seen two days ago. 

Hermione, watching him walk away with a curious gleam in her eyes. A ‘fire burn and cauldron bubble’ sort of gleam, as if she were stirring the ingredients of a very intriguing brew.

*

Draco was still puzzling over what he’d seen as the vision faded.

He shook his head to clear it and then looked at Dobby, who was staring at him with those unnervingly large, house-elf eyes.

“Dobby hopes that with his excellent assistance, Master Draco is now wiser about missed opportunities,” the elf told him.

“Fuck all, Dobby.” Draco swore in frustration. “I may be wiser, but what the bloody hell do you expect me to do about it? I can’t change the past.”

“No need for Master Draco to do anything except recognize. It is up to Dobby to do the next thing. His instructions were clear. Master Draco is tall but Dobby has a perfect solution.”

“What are you talking about? What ‘instructions?’”

The house elf snapped his fingers once again.

Draco whirled as a strange, slithering sound came from his bedroom. And then he saw _them._

Ghosts. Many ghosts. Dark and shapeless, streaming into the sitting room toward him, floating closer… 

Wait…. not ghosts. Bed coverings. A quilt. His emerald-green sheets. Two blankets. All looking strangely alive as they drifted into the room. 

The coverings flew toward the ceiling and then down, whirling around Draco like a cloth tornado, wrapping him tightly at Dobby’s command.

“Wait! Dobby, stop! What are you doing?!”

“Dobby is sorry, Master Draco. Dobby cannot stop. The spell that sent Dobby requires it.” 

“What bloody spell?? What fucking “instructions?”

“If Master Draco would please be quiet? His noisy rage is interrupting Dobby’s concentration.”  
Dobby gave Draco a judge-y look, then continued spinning the bed coverings. He began to hum ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.’

Moments later, all was quiet. 

Draco lay on the floor, wrapped tidily in his bed covers like a large sausage in a casing. The emerald sheets were fashioned around his middle into a festive bow, his forehead, eyes, and nose just peeking over the top of his cocoon.

Dobby dusted off his hands and gave a satisfied nod. “Dobby’s work here is done. Master Draco looks magnificent.”

“Dobby. Let me out!”

“No. Goodbye, Master Draco.” The little elf bent down and peered into Draco’s face. “Dobby is wishing you a Happy Christmas and a very happy life.”

A final snap of his fingers, a sudden _pop,_ and Dobby vanished. At the same moment, Draco felt a familiar tug at his navel. He was about to travel via house-elf magic. The miseries of this evening were apparently not over yet. 

Draco flinched as the world spun into blackness.

When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on someone else’s floor. He had no idea whose. No actual memory of the journey that had brought him here, except that it started with the Machiavellian machinations of a dead house-elf. 

Still tightly wrapped in his bed coverings, he turned his head to one side. There was an arched doorway that led to a softly lit kitchen. Through it, he saw…. bloody hell, _no._

Hermione Granger, in gumdrop-and-candy-cane pyjamas, magically stuffing a turkey. Her springy hair stood a foot above her head, spelled to stay up and out of her way. 

She’d turned at the thump he’d made upon arrival, her mouth open in startled ‘O.’ A mostly empty bottle of wine dangled from the hand not holding her wand.

Granger. Slightly drunk and wearing fuzzy reindeer slippers. He was in her flat in the early hours of Christmas morning. 

“What the actual fuck?” Draco muttered. Then, “Help! I’m in _here!_ ”

He could just see her over the top of his cocoon as she rushed into the sitting room and straight to his side, her eyes widening when she saw his predicament.

“Oh, gods, Malfoy!” Wielding her wand, she knelt, quickly incanting spells of release and unbinding. “I’m so sorry! This is all my fault!”

“What do you mean?” He struggled to sit up.

“I mean… Wait, is this meant to be a holiday bow?” She tugged at the festively tied bedsheets that were still around Draco’s middle. “Bloody hell! I never imagined he’d turn you into an actual _present!_ ”

Laughing, she sank into the wing chair beside her window. Draco glared at her as he tossed his tangled bed coverings into a pile in the corner of her room.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m sorry, Malfoy! This really is all my fault! But you gave me the idea for it, the other night when you visited the Archive. I just never expected the ghost to be Dobby!”

“Granger, you’re making no sense. Would you please explain?”

“The séance, Draco. When you jokingly mentioned that I should hold one, it gave me the most brilliant idea! So I _did_ hold one-- but here in my flat, not in the Archive.”

“You held a séance. Why??”

“I thought… it seemed to me…” 

In the low firelight he could see that Hermione was blushing.

“Well, it seemed to me that you could use a friend. And I certainly could! I’ve thought for ages that… we might be somehow good for each other.” She blushed again. “I wasn’t quite sure how you felt. So, I decided to send you a ghost. Someone from our past. To show you certain things.” She looked up at him with wide eyes. “But I didn’t specifically ask for Dobby!”

Draco was fascinated. And awed. “Fuck all. You would have had to use dark magic to bring a ghost.”

“Yep.”

“Damn, Granger. What if you’d accidentally called Voldemort?”

“He wouldn’t have come! I asked for a _helpful_ ghost. Dobby was always very helpful, if a bit… overbearing sometimes.”

“Why did he wrap me up? He kept saying those were his instructions…”

“Again, my fault. I tried to explain to him that haunting you was a good thing. That I needed a friend, and so did you. All honesty? I told him this was a sort of holiday gift to myself. He must have taken me literally.”

“It would have been a lot simpler just to ask me out for coffee,” Draco muttered.

“That was supposed to come next! Dobby was only meant to show you things and let you come to your own conclusions. You weren’t supposed to wind up here!”

“But I did wind up here.” Draco plopped down on the floor near the fire, leaning back on his hands and stretching out his long legs. The smile he gave Hermione was one hundred percent Malfoy smirk. 

This pretty witch, whom he’d been admiring for far longer than he’d realized, had schemed, plotted, and planned, with the end goal that he’d be her Christmas gift. It was the single most flattering thing that had ever happened to him. 

“Granger, I have to admit I’m impressed with your creativity. Besides that, I’ve never had the gift of being someone’s gift before.”

Hermione blushed a third time. It really was adorable when she did that. Draco would have thought that Archivists weren’t the blushing sort.

“You and I joked so much about the Archives being haunted. That’s what gave me the idea. Well, that and Dickens’ _A Christmas Carol._ I’d been re-reading it this week, and I thought _What if…?_ Then you mentioned a séance and I thought _Why not?”_

“I know _A Christmas Carol_.” He laughed. “Better than I’d like, after tonight.”

“Malfoy, since you’re here… would you like coffee?”

“Thanks. I could use some. But maybe not as much as _you._ ” He gestured to the almost empty wine bottle she’d dropped on her way to unwrap him.

“Don’t judge,” Hermione said primly. “My parents are coming for Christmas lunch. All’s fair in family love and holiday coping.”

She hopped up from the chair. “You’re sure you’re not angry with me?”

“Angry? I’m flattered as all hell.” His eyes gleamed wickedly. “Still, being haunted and transported was a bit of an ordeal. I think maybe you’ll need to make it up to me.” 

“How?”

“Later, after you’ve finished with your parents, let’s go out for drinks. The Leaky’s always open, even on Christmas night. After that I’d like a private, midnight tour of the Magical Archive. Just the two of us.”

“Done!” Her eyes sparkled. “ _If_ you are sure you’re up for it. The Archive at midnight might turn into something of an adventure. But I can’t promise anything.”

Picking up her wand, she padded into the kitchen to start their coffee.

Draco glanced out the sitting room window. In the dark of an early Christmas morning, he thought he saw the owl swoop past, with a rush of wings and a flash of eerie, glowing eyes. 

Signs? Portents? Dobby in disguise? Only time would tell. 

As for this evening, their adventures were already guaranteed. Draco smiled and followed Hermione into her kitchen.

FIN


End file.
